All entries for July 2010

July 30, 2010

There was a neat little trick I put in last week’s generally well received nurikabe puzzle that I’ve decided to play with a bit this week too. I haven’t really had time to turn this one up to 11, but this at least remains a difficulty level above from your standard 10×10 size puzzle.

July 23, 2010

It’s been a while since I’ve done a nurikabe puzzle, although I seem to recall that I always seem to have a bit of a moan about how my nurikabe aren’t quite up to the highest standards. This, as opposed to something like my Masyu puzzles which I believe are as good as anything bar juno. It’s a similar story here – this puzzle has quite a nice “solving flow” to it, but it’s not quite as polished as I think it could be – which is not to say I didn’t give it my best shot! Nevertheless, I think this is a pretty nice idea, and will certainly have you scratching your head for at least a moment.

Interestingly, I’ve seen my traffic drop off a little bit in the last couple of weeks, which coincides with the end of the Warwick term. I’ll be keeping going throughout this summer period, but for now, enjoy!

July 15, 2010

‘Fraid it’s not an early Friday puzzles entry, instead I have a couple of puzzle related announcements to make to all you friends, Romans and puzzle fans.

First up. The UK Puzzle Association is proud to announce its new (albeit still under comstruction) website, http://www.ukpuzzles.org. The UKPA will be the representative body for the UK to the World Puzzle Federation. What this means in practice is exciting new times for all British based puzzlers, with lots of projects in the pipeline. There’s already a discussion forum, with top notch puzzles, as well as probably the best Sudoku competition this side of a WSC to come. Although I might be slightly biased on that last point!

Secondly, a little pointer towards another promising looking Sudoku competition at the weekend, hosted by LMI and written by two-time World Champion Jan Mrozowski. Read all about it here and the competition page is here.

Finally, my partner in PhD-ing crime, Mr. Robert Tang has in his spare time been helping to organise the annual Sydney University Mathematics Society Puzzle hunt. This sort of thing is no doubt inspired by the (probably) world famous MIT Mystery Hunt, so if that’s the sort of thing to float your boat then you should mosey on straight down here

July 02, 2010

So a week or two back I saw a wonderful twist on the rules of heyawake, courtesy of Grant Fikes. I’m sure the more adventurous browsers of this blog will have already come across his wonderful page, but for those who haven’t then give it a visit.

Anyhow, the twist is this: instead of numbers in the rooms indicating which squares should be shaded in, rooms are labelled with either S, A, or not at all. Rooms labelled S should have squares shaded in with 180 degree rotational symmetry (which includes no shading at all), whereas rooms labelled A definitely cannot have that 180 degree rotational symmetry. Rooms with no label can be shaded any which way you like, provided you don’t break the other heyawake rules, which if you’ve forgotten can be found on the very handy “how to play” section there on the left. Anyhow, Grant’s puzzle was fairly gentle, but here I’ve been a bit keener to explore some of the logic, and how it interplays with some standard heyawake tricks.

#070 A/S Heyawake – rated hard

I should also mention that some puzzles from a while back have been featured in the 8th edition of Dr. Gareth Moore’s Sudoku Xtra magazine. This is quite a cool magazine, and whilst I should stress that I’m receiving no commission or anything, it is definitely worth a look for all you puzzle fans – it’s packed with a lot of nice puzzles. As well as those WSC5 style puzzles I did, it features the Sudoku Islands puzzle from last Friday. So what the heck…here are a couple more. These are definitely on the easy side of things, but I do have some trickier ones in reserve that are part of my ongoing sudoku project. Enjoy!